DOCSLIB.ORG

Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Confirmation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 5-2020 Sex, Stress, and the Supreme Court: Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation Hearings ot the Supreme Court Alexandra Johnson University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the American Politics Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, and the Social Influence and Political Communication Commons Citation Johnson, A. (2020). Sex, Stress, and the Supreme Court: Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation Hearings ot the Supreme Court. Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/3621 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sex, Stress, and the Supreme Court: Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation Hearings to the Supreme Court A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Science by Alexandra Johnson University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, 2018 University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, 2018 May 2020 University of Arkansas This thesis is approved for the recommendation to the Graduate Council. ___________________________________ Patrick A. Stewart, Ph.D. Thesis Director ___________________________________ ___________________________________ William Schreckhise, Ph.D. Karen Sebold, Ph.D. Committee Member Committee Member 1 Abstract This study analyzed the relationship between verbal and nonverbal vocalic communication patterns exhibited by Brett Kavanaugh, now a sitting Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, during his Senate confirmation hearings in 2018. Additionally, the relationship between verbal statement types: attempt to define reality, personal narrative, policy positions, attacks, acclaims, and defenses, and the nonverbal vocalics of sighs, sharp intakes of breath, and sniffs were evaluated together to see which statement types would elicit higher physiological stress responses during both the 16-minute speech given at the end of the Day One hearing and the 45-minute testimony during the sexual assault hearing. Scholarship suggests that verbal and nonverbal communication are both used to create judgements of credibility (Stiff et al., 1989) which was used by the Senate and the American citizens at large during this political scandal. Video content analysis software, ANVIL, was used to code both hearings for Kavanaugh’s flow of speech, referred to as utterances, his disruptions in speech flow, referred to as intra-utterance pauses, individual statement end-times, and nonverbal vocalic observations. Three coders read and applied one of the five statement types to each sentence of both hearings. Results from the study showed that time spent in both utterances and in recovery during the intra-utterance pause differed. Statement types provided evidence to support the claim that the narratives of each hearing would differ due to higher levels of stress during the sexual assault hearing. Additionally, the U.S. Senate sexual assault hearing found Kavanaugh evincing a substantially greater amount vocalic stress signals such as sighs, sharp intakes of breath, and sniffs when compared with his first day testimony. Finally, when analyzed together, personal narrative statements were most likely while attack and defense statements were least likely to elicit vocalic stress responses. This study provides a microanalysis perspective on how verbal and nonverbal vocalics elicit physiological responses during times of heightened stress. Keywords: Senate hearings; stress; Brett Kavanaugh; content analysis; nonverbal behavior; vocalic utterances; intra-utterance pauses; sighs, sharp breath intakes; sniffs. ©2020 Alexandra Johnson All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank Dr. Patrick Stewart for his expertise, guidance, and mentorship throughout the process of writing this thesis. I would like to also express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Schreckhise and Dr. Sebold for serving as my committee members. Their flexibility and kindness as I finished this process during a global pandemic was very appreciated. I must sincerely thank Emily Stouffer, Sarah Ames, and Adam Franky for the many hours they spent coding and discussing the verbal and nonverbal behavior of Brett Kavanaugh for me. Their effort did not go unnoticed as their observations and insights contributed greatly to the findings of this study. This project is better because of you! I also have to thank the Graduate Coordinator within the Political Science Department, Dr. Conge, for his willingness to answer my many questions with genuine kindness throughout this process. To my classmates Alejandra Campos and Chloe Riggs, I am so thankful for your endless encouragement over the course of the past two years. The best hype girls around. Lastly and most of all, I have to thank my family and friends for their constant motivation, reassurance, and reminders to get some fresh air when the times got tough. I would not have been able to do this without each of you. Dedication This study is wholeheartedly dedicated to my family. I would not be here without the work ethic, confidence in my abilities and intelligence, and love for politics that they instilled in me throughout my life. I will be forever grateful for that. To the absolute best family in the world, Patrick, Susan, and Shannon Johnson Table of Contents Introduction & Historical Analysis………………………………………………………….…1 Chapter 2 – The Verbal Style…………….…………………………………………………....11 Chapter 3 – The Vocalic Style.…….……………………………………………………….….34 Chapter 4 – The Coherence of Verbal and Vocalic Styles…………………………………...57 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………73 References……………………………………………………………………………………….88 1 Introduction & Historical Analysis On July 10, 2018, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh, then a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to the Supreme Court of the United States. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, administered by the Senate Judiciary Committee, were held between September 4th and 6th of 2018. Though his initial confirmation proceedings were not without the presence of voiced criticisms from opposing Democratic members of Congress, with one exception (Sen. Manchin of West Virginia), in addition to liberal media and interest groups, it was conducted largely as those before him. Procedurally, Kavanaugh had a moment to address the Committee before spending three days answering a plethora of thorough questions from all of the Committee members to understand Kavanaugh’s approach to the bench and opinions on policy that he would potentially impact if confirmed. Shortly after his initial hearings, however, sexual assault allegations came to light on September 14, 2018. This led to additional hearings to address the allegations where both Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey-Ford, the woman who recounts the alleged sexual assault, testified in front of the Committee. She claimed that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party while they both were in high school in the early 1980s. Dr. Blasey-Ford and Kavanaugh both testified on September 27th, separately, to provide their sides of the story to the committee. Kavanaugh adamantly denied the allegations. A potential influence of his confirmation hearings was the significant number of women elected into Congress during the 2018 Midterm elections, just as had happened after the Thomas scandal and confirmation in 1991. This midterm cycles saw 235 women nominees advance to the general election, over double from 2016, which had 120. The results increased the number of women in the House from its previous record of 85 to 102 (90 Democrats, 12 Republicans), with 2 35 being first-time winners of House seats. In the Senate, 23 women advanced from the primaries, and 5 new women won their general elections (3 Republican, 2 Democrat), with 25 women represented in the chamber’s entirety. Additionally, in multiple races, both candidates were female. The House had 52 women in 26 races, and the Senate had 6 races with both female candidates. This nomination was President Trump’s second Supreme Court confirmation during his first term. The first being Neil Gorsuch, who was confirmed on April 7, 2017, 66 days after his nomination, by a 54-45 vote which included support from all Republican and three Democratic senators. Gorsuch’s confirmation came after President Barack Obama’s attempt to fill the same vacancy within his last year in office when he nominated Judge Merrick Garland, who was more ideologically moderate. However, the Republican-majority Senate refused to proceed with the nomination, arguing that filling the vacancy should be decided by the newly elected president after the 2016 election. The Republican-majority successfully rejected this “critical” confirmation, defined below, as Garland was nominated by a Democratic president to replace one of the most conservative Justices to ever sit on the Court. The Significance of Supreme Court Confirmations Though Congress is the main policy-making body, and the president is required to sign those bills into law, the courts also play a role in shaping policy. Landmark decisions like Munn v Illinois
Recommended publications
  • Book Note Justice Thomas’S Inconsistent Originalism

    Book Note Justice Thomas’S Inconsistent Originalism

    BOOK NOTE JUSTICE THOMAS’S INCONSISTENT ORIGINALISM MY GRANDFATHER’S SON: A MEMOIR. By Clarence Thomas.1 New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 2007. Pp. xii, 289. $26.95. Since his infamous confirmation hearings, several of Justice Tho- mas’s biographers2 have struggled to understand and explain the ap- parent conflicts in the life and jurisprudence of a man who acknowl- edges that his conservative views do not comport with the traditional viewpoints of African Americans3 and who advocates an originalist in- terpretation of the Constitution.4 Justice Thomas has received harsh criticism from some of these biographers, and the debate surrounding his adequacy as a Supreme Court Justice has strong political under- pinnings.5 Seeking to correct other accounts of his life, which Justice Thomas views as partly “untrue, at times grossly so” (p. x), My Grand- father’s Son sheds new light on his personal history — especially the key roles race and religion played therein — but generally eschews di- rect discussion of his jurisprudential philosophy. Even so, Justice Thomas’s memoir illuminates his judicial philosophy, because that phi- losophy stems from the experiences and principles discussed in his book. My Grandfather’s Son begins with a description of Justice Tho- mas’s West African ancestry (p. 2) and early childhood. Born in a shanty in Pinpoint, Georgia, on June 23, 1948 (pp. 3–4), Thomas spent his early years fatherless, alongside his mother, Leola; aunt, Annie; and siblings, Emma Mae and Myers (pp. 1, 3). In 1954, Myers accidentally burned down their home (p. 6), and Leola took her sons to live in a de- ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 1 Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States.
  • Reading Clarence Thomas

    Reading Clarence Thomas

    Columbia Law School Scholarship Archive Faculty Scholarship Faculty Publications 2004 Reading Clarence Thomas Kendall Thomas Columbia Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, and the Law and Race Commons Recommended Citation Kendall Thomas, Reading Clarence Thomas, 18 NAT'L BLACK L. J. 224 (2004). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2172 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Scholarship Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholarship Archive. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ESSAY READING CLARENCE THOMAS Kendall Thomas* The state is INHERENTLY racial, every state institution is a RACIAL institu- tion, and the entire social order is equilabrated (unstably) by the state to preserve the prevailing racial order. -Omi & Winant' Several years ago, a special issue of The New Yorker entitled "Black in America" included an extraordinary profile of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.2 Authored by Jeffrey Rosen, the article begins with an account of Justice Thomas's interventions in two of the most important cases decided during the Court's previous term. In the first of these cases, Missouri v. Jenkins, the Court was called upon to define the constitutional scope and limits of the federal judicial power to address racial concentra- tion in Kansas City's public schools through salary increases and the crea- tion of magnet programs.3 In the second case, Adarand v.
  • Justices' Profiles Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the William & Mary Law School

    Justices' Profiles Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the William & Mary Law School

    College of William & Mary Law School William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Supreme Court Preview Conferences, Events, and Lectures 1995 Section 1: Justices' Profiles Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the William & Mary Law School Repository Citation Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the William & Mary Law School, "Section 1: Justices' Profiles" (1995). Supreme Court Preview. 35. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/preview/35 Copyright c 1995 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/preview WARREN E. BURGER IS DEAD AT 87 Was Chief Justice for 17 Years Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company The New York Times June 26, 1995, Monday Linda Greenhouse Washington, June 25 - Warren E. Burger, who retired to apply like an epithet -- overruled no major in 1986 after 17 years as the 15th Chief Justice of the decisions from the Warren era. United States, died here today at age 87. The cause It was a further incongruity that despite Chief was congestive heart failure, a spokeswoman for the Justice Burger's high visibility and the evident relish Supreme Court said. with which he used his office to expound his views on An energetic court administrator, Chief Justice everything from legal education to prison Burger was in some respects a transitional figure management, scholars and Supreme Court despite his tenure, the longest for a Chief Justice in commentators continued to question the degree to this century. He presided over a Court that, while it which he actually led the institution over which he so grew steadily more conservative with subsequent energetically presided.
  • Republican Goveners Association America 2024 Namun 2019

    Republican Goveners Association America 2024 Namun 2019

    REPUBLICAN GOVENERS ASSOCIATION AMERICA 2024 NAMUN 2019 Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Letter from the Chair 4 Letter from the Director 5 Introduction 6 Definitions 6 Historical Background I: Federalism 7 Federalism in the United States 7 Federalism in the Constitution 7 Federalism in Reality 8 Federalism in Jurisprudence 8 Federalism and Presidentialism 9 Federalism and the Congress 10 Moving Forward: A New Federalist Framework? 12 Historical Context II: Contemporary American Politics 12 Donald Trump 12 2016 Election 13 Russian Interference in the 2016 Election and Wiki Leaks 13 2018 Congressional Elections 13 2020 Presidential Election 14 2022 Congressional Elections 14 2024 Presidential Election 14 Timeline 15 Issues 16 Overview 16 Republicans 16 Democrats 16 Economy 17 Healthcare 17 Repealing and Replacing Obamacare 18 Immigration 19 Race 19 Task of the Committee 20 2 www.namun.org / [email protected] / @namun2019 The State of Affairs 20 Call to Action 20 Questions to Consider 20 Sources 21 Appendices 23 Appendix A: 2016 Electoral Map 23 Appendix B: 2024 Electoral Map 23 Appendix C: “The Blue Wall.” 23 Appendix D: Total U.S National Debt 24 Appendix E: Intragovernmental Debt 24 Appendix F: Public Debt 25 Appendix G. Ideology Changes in the Parties 26 Bibliography 27 3 www.namun.org / [email protected] / @namun2019 Letter from the Chair Dear Delegates, It is with great pleasure that I welcome you the Republican Governors of America 2024. I’d like to thank you for expressing your interest in this committee. My name is Michael Elliott and I will be the chair for this committee.
  • The Civil War in the American Ruling Class

    The Civil War in the American Ruling Class

    tripleC 16(2): 857-881, 2018 http://www.triple-c.at The Civil War in the American Ruling Class Scott Timcke Department of Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies, The University of The West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, [email protected] Abstract: American politics is at a decisive historical conjuncture, one that resembles Gramsci’s description of a Caesarian response to an organic crisis. The courts, as a lagging indicator, reveal this longstanding catastrophic equilibrium. Following an examination of class struggle ‘from above’, in this paper I trace how digital media instruments are used by different factions within the capitalist ruling class to capture and maintain the commanding heights of the American social structure. Using this hegemony, I argue that one can see the prospect of American Caesarism being institutionally entrenched via judicial appointments at the Supreme Court of the United States and other circuit courts. Keywords: Gramsci, Caesarism, ruling class, United States, hegemony Acknowledgement: Thanks are due to Rick Gruneau, Mariana Jarkova, Dylan Kerrigan, and Mark Smith for comments on an earlier draft. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers – the work has greatly improved because of their contributions. A version of this article was presented at the Local Entanglements of Global Inequalities conference, held at The University of The West Indies, St. Augustine in April 2018. 1. Introduction American politics is at a decisive historical juncture. Stalwarts in both the Democratic and the Republican Parties foresee the end of both parties. “I’m worried that I will be the last Republican president”, George W. Bush said as he recoiled at the actions of the Trump Administration (quoted in Baker 2017).
  • Clarence Thomas Takes Oath As Court's 106Th Justice

    Clarence Thomas Takes Oath As Court's 106Th Justice

    THE SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY VOLUME XII NUMBER 4,1991 Clarence Thomas Takes Oath as Court's 106th Justice CourtesyLois Long, Officeof the Curator of the Court In a ceremony held on the South Lawn ofthe White House on October 18,1991, Judge Clarence Thomas took the officialoath of a federal government official prior to becoming the 106th member of the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Byron R. White administered this oath. The judicial oath was a administered by ChiefJustice Willijun H. Rehnquist at a private fi&QSpfM ceremony on October 23, 1991 so that he might commence his work on the Court. A more traditional ceremonywasheld in the Supreme Court Chamber on November 1, 1991 in which Chief Justice Rehnquist readministered the oath to Justice Thomas who then assumed his seat on the Bench. Courtesy Lois Long, Office of the Curatorof the Court The ChiefJustice looks on as Justice Thomas signs his judicial oath of officeas part ofthe ceremony held at the Supreme Court on November 1,1991. Justice Thomas was sworn in at a public ceremony held in the Supreme Court Chamber. Justice Thomas fills the seat vacated by the retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Justice Thomas was bornonJune23, 1948, inPinPoint, Georgia. Hisearly childhood years were spent in Georgia where he attended parochial school much ofthe time. After briefly attending Immaculate Conception Seminary in Mis souri , Justice Thomas entered Holy Cross College in Worcester, At a White House ceremony, Judge Clarence Thomas (left Massachusetts. He graduated from Holy Cross with honors, foreground) takes the olTiclal oath of office required of all finishing ninth in his class and then entered Yale Law School, government officials.
  • Tiered Balancing and the Fate of Roe V. Wade: How the New Supreme Court Majority Could Turn the Undue-Burden Standard Into a Deferential Pike Test

    Tiered Balancing and the Fate of Roe V. Wade: How the New Supreme Court Majority Could Turn the Undue-Burden Standard Into a Deferential Pike Test

    TIERED BALANCING AND THE FATE OF ROE V. WADE: HOW THE NEW SUPREME COURT MAJORITY COULD TURN THE UNDUE-BURDEN STANDARD INTO A DEFERENTIAL PIKE TEST By Brendan T. Beery* In one of the more noteworthy uses of his much-ballyhooed “swing vote”1 on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy sided with Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan in striking down two Texas laws that restricted access to reproductive- healthcare facilities. The laws did so by imposing toilsome admitting privileges and surgical-facility standards that clinics had difficulty abiding. 2 The proposition that a woman has an unenumerated constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, at least before the point of fetal viability, won the day in 1973.3 But, as 2018 fades into 2019, no judicial precedent is more endangered than the one that has evolved in a triumvirate of cases: Roe v. Wade,4 Planned Parenthood v. Casey,5 and Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt,6 save perhaps the principle * Professor of Law, Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School; B.A., Bradley University, 1995; J.D., summa cum laude, Thomas M. Cooley Law School, 1998. The author wishes to thank his friend and colleague, Professor Daniel R. Ray, for his assistance in conceptualizing this essay. The author also thanks the editors and staff of the Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy for their incisive feedback, professionalism, and hard work. 1 See Caitlin E. Borgmann, Abortion, the Undue Burden Standard, and the Evisceration of Women’s Privacy, 16 WM. & MARY J. WOMEN & L. 291, 292 (2010).
  • Trump, Gender Rebels, and Masculinities Dara Purvis Penn State Law

    Trump, Gender Rebels, and Masculinities Dara Purvis Penn State Law

    Penn State Law eLibrary Journal Articles Faculty Works 2019 Trump, Gender Rebels, and Masculinities Dara Purvis Penn State Law Follow this and additional works at: https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/fac_works Part of the Sexuality and the Law Commons Recommended Citation Dara Purvis, Trump, Gender Rebels, and Masculinities, 54 Wake Forest L. Rev. 423 (2019). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Works at Penn State Law eLibrary. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Penn State Law eLibrary. For more information, please contact [email protected]. W06_PURVIS.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 5/13/19 4:45 PM TRUMP, GENDER REBELS, AND MASCULINITIES Dara E. Purvis* Since the inauguration of President Trump, most of his Administration’s actions have been sharply conservative: notably, his efforts to ban transgender Americans from military service. There have been exceptions, however, such as proposals to create support for paid parental leave, an issue previously championed by Democrats. This seeming contradiction of progressive and regressive policies can be reconciled by viewing the Trump Administration through the lens of masculinities theory. Hegemonic masculinity depends upon sharp differentiation between “real” men and everyone else, the latter occupying places in a hierarchy far below men. In this reading, Trump’s version of parental support makes sense: it focuses support solely on women, who in the view of hegemonic masculinity are the only proper caregivers for children. Similarly, masculinities analysis helps to explain targeting transgender Americans, as this group directly challenges a central tenet of hegemonic masculinity—that gender is binary and immutable.
  • Progressive Foreign Policy Debrief Intel for Advocacy

    Progressive Foreign Policy Debrief Intel for Advocacy

    Progressive Foreign Policy Debrief Intel for Advocacy TOPLINE TAKEAWAY ● The world showed us this week just how isolated the U.S. is on Iran. TRUMP AT THE UN: MAKING REGIME CHANGE GREAT AGAIN As Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assault hearing mired Washington, DC in domestic controversy this week, international affairs took center stage in New York City when world leaders gathered for the annual United Nations General Assembly. While literally ​ laughable at times, Trump’s performance at the UN this week was also dangerous, as his ​ administration’s inflammatory rhetoric put us further along the path to war with Iran. While the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal earlier this year, the deal has persisted with European, Chinese, and Russian support and continued Iranian compliance. So during the week, Trump escalated his efforts to finally dismantle the deal. In his speech to the General ​ ​ Assembly, Trump lambasted the deal as a “windfall” for Iran and asked all countries to isolate the regime. While chairing a UN Security Council meeting, Trump reiterated U.S. commitment to re-imposing nuclear-related sanctions in full force, in addition to pursuing more sanctions, “tougher than ever before.” He declared that any countries refusing to comply with U.S. sanctions would “face severe consequences.” ​ ​ Trump also made his administration's policy of regime change particularly transparent this week. At the General Assembly, Trump asked nations “to support Iran’s people as they ​ struggle to reclaim their religious and righteous destiny” – ignoring the fact that his policies do the opposite. Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani recognized this and responded, remarking that “it ​ ​ is ironic that the U.S.
  • What Kind of Judge Is Brett Kavanaugh?

    What Kind of Judge Is Brett Kavanaugh?

    de•C ARDOZOnovo L AW R EVIEW WHAT KIND OF JUDGE IS BRETT KAVANAUGH? A Quantitative Analysis Elliott Ash† & Daniel L. Chen† This article reports the results of a series of data analyses of how recent Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh compares to other potential Supreme Court nominees and current Supreme Court Justices in his judging style. The analyses reveal a number of ways in which Judge Kavanaugh differs systematically from his colleagues. First, Kavanaugh dissents and is dissented against along partisan lines. More than other Judges and Justices, Kavanaugh dissents at a higher rate during the lead-up to elections, suggesting that he feels personally invested in national politics. Far more often than his colleagues, he justifies his decisions with conservative doctrines, including politicized precedents that tend to be favored by Republican-appointed judges, the original Articles of the Constitution, and the language of economics and free markets. These findings demonstrate the usefulness of quantitative analysis in the evaluation of judicial nominees. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION........................................................................................ 71 I. PREVIOUS LITERATURE ..................................................................... 72 † Assistant Professor of Law, Economics, and Data Science, ETH Zurich. Contact: [email protected]. † Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Directeur de Recherche at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS),
  • Trump, Kavanaugh Effect Bury Donnelly Mike Braun Pulls Off an Emphatic Upset As Voters Embrace the President by BRIAN A

    Trump, Kavanaugh Effect Bury Donnelly Mike Braun Pulls Off an Emphatic Upset As Voters Embrace the President by BRIAN A

    V24, N13 Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018 Trump, Kavanaugh effect bury Donnelly Mike Braun pulls off an emphatic upset as voters embrace the president By BRIAN A. HOWEY INDIANAPOLIS – It would be easy to consign Mike Braun’s epic, not-even- close upset of U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly to a Democratic blunder on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Don- nelly, along with U.S. Sens. Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill all voted against Kavanaugh and lost emphatically. West Virginia Democrat U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin supported Kavana- Senator-elect Mike Braun addresses the GOP victory rally Election Night as U.S. Sen. ugh and won easily. Todd Young looks on. (HPI Photo by Mark Curry) Until the allegations of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford surfaced in mid-September, probable yea vote on Kavanaugh, which had that occurred, might have left this race on more parochial footing. Donnelly had narrow poll advantages and Democratic voter intensity far outpaced Republicans. He was a plausible and Continued on page 4 Big showdown that wasn’t By MARK SOUDER FORT WAYNE – The U.S. Senate election in Indi- ana was perceived to be a pivotal showdown for control of that body. It was supposed to be another test of the Republican-lite strategy employed by Evan Bayh to carry “I have supported the Mueller Indiana, a method he con- ceived after watching his father investigation from the beginning fall in an upset to Dan Quayle in 1980. because we need answers about What is hard to remem- Russia’s attempts to influence ber, even for those who re- member that there were two our elections.
  • The Truth About Clarence Thomas and the Need for New Black Leadership

    The Truth About Clarence Thomas and the Need for New Black Leadership

    THE TRUTH ABOUT CLARENCE THOMAS AND THE NEED FOR NEW BLACK LEADERSHIP Stephen F. Smith* It has been almost nine years since Associate Justice Clarence Thomas was confirmed as the 106th Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During that time, he has come under sharp and unrelenting criticism from almost all segments of the media.1 Indeed, some of his harshest attacks hdve come from the civil rights community, which one would have expected to welcome the ascent of a black American to the pinnacle of his profession. For example, at the 1995 convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ("NAACP"), Justice Thomas was repeatedly called a "pimp" and a "traitor."2 Retired U.S. Court of Appeals Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, whom some in the civil rights community had hoped would succeed the late Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, entered the fray in the years prior to his death, arguing in a recent speech that Justice 3 Thomas is "dragging blacks back to the oppression of the past." Is all this part of some personal vendetta against Justice Thomas? Maybe in part, but far more is at work here. Clearly, the debate about Justice Thomas (which has almost uniformly been one-sided and mean- spirited) involves more than a referendum on the man's character and jurisprudential views. Simply put, the relentless assaults on the Justice are part and parcel of a larger struggle for the hearts and minds of black America, a veritable last gasp of those who have traditionally viewed themselves as leaders of the black community to maintain their hold on power and of the liberal Democrats to maintain control over their core constituency.